Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 41

to write a professional email, struggle to organize and prioritize tasks, or have a difficult time collaborating with coworkers." A survey of more than 1,000 hiring managers by the
Society for Human Resource Management yielded a similar
finding: About one-third cited a lack of soft skills among candidates as the reason they had trouble filling positions.
One promising program has the potential to end the
deadlock over the skills gap, satisfying employers while addressing the skeptics' critique that companies skimp on training. Developed by the Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education (FAME), this small-but-growing two-year apprenticeship-style program trains students to maintain and
repair the machinery that now does most of the rote work
of manufacturing. It has a unique curricular focus: As much
as two-thirds of students' time is spent on soft-skills development, while just one-third is devoted to technical training. The result is that graduates have excellent professional
and collaborative skills, fulfilling employers' needs. But it's
also successful enough to draw the kind of financial investment from companies that workers deserve. First launched
at a single Toyota factory in 2010, it has already grown to involve more than 350 manufacturers in 13 states, from large
refrigerator makers to smaller plastics plants. Of the roughly
850 students who have graduated so far, 85 percent have been
hired by their sponsoring employers with starting salaries at
$50,000 or more. And because the students don't pay for their
training, they can graduate debt free.
While few issues these days draw bipartisan consensus,
politicians as diverse as Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and even
Donald Trump agree on the need for more high-quality career
and technical education opportunities in general, and apprenticeships in particular. FAME could be the kind of program to
drive that consensus into action, for the benefit of both employers and workers.

ennis Dio Parker, the founder of FAME, has grappled
for decades with skills shortages, ever since his employer, Toyota, launched a factory in Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1987. Now employing 10,000 workers, it's the largest
Toyota plant in the world, but when it first opened, the factory had trouble finding enough qualified workers. "We needed workers qualified in skilled maintenance-maintaining
the conveyor lines, the power to the buildings, the robots, the
table lifters," said Parker, whose job was to develop in-house
training programs for Toyota. These workers also needed the
problem-solving skills to figure out why a machine might be
broken and how to fix it. In addition, they needed to be able to
communicate and work closely with the engineering department and with each other. Unfortunately, Parker said, "not
many people were passing the assessment tests."
As Parker tinkered with new training curricula over the
years, he interviewed dozens of supervisors about the skills
their exceptional workers possessed and saw some common
themes. "Technically, they're highly competent, but they're
also great attenders," Parker said. "We never worry about

them missing. They have great initiative." These workers also
had great communications and people skills. Parker set out to
train workers to perform like those exceptional employees.
The program he ultimately developed was effective enough
to draw the interest of other companies, whom he organized
into a collaborative to disseminate the model. That collaborative became the Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education, launched in 2010, and its signature program for technicians has since come to be known as FAME.

rom week one, FAME makes clear that it's not a traditional college program where students can get away
with playing hooky or sit slouched in the back of class.
At orientation, students receive a collared uniform shirt,
which they're expected to wear to class every day. This insistence on a uniform is actually part of the program's soft-skills
curriculum. "If you look professional, you'll start to feel professional," Parker said. Students also learn the program's expectations about attendance-which is not to be on time, but
to be early. Outside each classroom are attendance sheets with
students' names and a daily log of arrival times. Students are
marked in green if they are 20 to 30 minutes early to class,
while on-time arrivals are marked in yellow and tardies of
even one minute past the start time are in pink or red. A single
red mark is enough to warrant a warning; three tardies means
dismissal from the program. The emphasis on attendance underscores how the world of work contrasts with that of school,
Parker said. "Colleges do a terrible job of preparing their students for the rigor and discipline of being a good attender at
work. You can have a student with a 4.0 [GPA] who misses
classes from time to time, and from the college's perspective,
their attendance is perfect. But they're still going to get fired
in a heartbeat on the job."
At the start of the program, students are introduced to
the FAME's signature pedagogical prop: laminated "pocket
cards," sized to fit in the pocket of a work shirt, that serve
as crib sheets for core concepts. The first week of class, students receive two cards focused on "safety culture" and three
cards on "professional behaviors." As the program continues,
they accumulate more cards, on communication skills, problem solving, "visual workplace organization," and other skills
specific to their future jobs as advanced manufacturing technicians (AMTs). They're expected to memorize and be able to
recite each card on command, and, ultimately, to apply the
content in a real-life situation.
Each card includes a checklist of required behaviors or
core concepts, in simple, direct language. The "AMT professional greeting" card, for example, lays out seven steps for
how students are expected to greet each other. Step 1 is the
"professional posture" (described on a separate card), followed by Step 2: "Greet the other person with a strong voice.
Look in the eye." The sequence ends with Step 7: "Tell them
you are pleased to meet them and/or offer to help."
While these instructions might seem basic, they are often eye-openers for the 18- to 20-year-olds who make up the
Washington Monthly 41

Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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